This year, Father’s Day calls, as it always does, for the introduction of a legal presumption of equal parenting. For the restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit is being paid to mothers. For the restoration of the requirement that providers of fertility treatment take account of the child’s need for a father, and the repeal of the ludicrous provision for two women to be listed as the parents on a birth certificate. And for paternity leave to be made available at any time until the child is 18 or leaves school.
That last, in particular, would reassert paternal authority (and thus require paternal responsibility) at key points in childhood and adolescence. That authority and responsibility require an economic basis such as only the State can ever guarantee, and such as only the State can very often deliver. And that basis is high-wage, high-skilled, high-status employment. All aspects of public policy must take account of this urgent social and cultural need.
Not least, that includes energy policy: the energy sources to be preferred by the State are those providing the high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs that secure the economic basis of paternal authority in the family and in the wider community. So, nuclear power. And coal, not dole.
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oh you must not let your views on Fatherhood to be formed by Daily Mail headlines and articles in the Guardians Womens Page.
ReplyDeleteNor those unworthy fathers who protest their aptitide for good fatherhood by climbing onto the roof of Hatty Harpersons house......and the balcony of Buck House.
Dressed as Batman of course.
For the great majority of Fathers (2 sons 2 grandsons) it is a great great sacramental Blessing.....which enriches my life on a daily basis.
Even more oddly I am (in their eyes) able to enrich their lives.
What a wonderful wonderful day. Grandad slippers. Grandad socks. A new shirt and jammies.
And lots of birdseed courtesy of a 6 year old.
Dont believe the Daily Mail and the Guardian womens page. Dont believe Batman with the megaphone.
Saint Joseph Pray for us.
Paternal "authority and responsibility require an economic basis such as only the State can ever guarantee, and such as only the State can very often deliver. And that basis is high-wage, high-skilled, high-status employment. All aspects of public policy must take account of this urgent social and cultural need.
ReplyDeleteNot least, that includes energy policy: the energy sources to be preferred by the State are those providing the high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs that secure the economic basis of paternal authority in the family and in the wider community. So, nuclear power. And coal, not dole."
Not something that I have ever raed either in the Daily Mail or on the Guardian Women's Page.
Saint Joseph, pray for us, indeed.
I suspect St Joseph worked to support his first wife and their children and then to take care of the Theotokos and the Christ Child without gaily assuming the widow and the spinster would put their hands in their pockets to contribute. A far, far cry from today's parents with their endless supply of free obstetric care and free education and £15 quid pocket money per brat per week for 19 years or whatever ludicrous amount it is bled from the childless. And, it's easy to see you're a man, because women love their husbands (if they love them at all) regardless of whether they're skilled tradesmen, university professors or navvies and the authority of the husband/father depends on love, not money, many a poor fool has been married for his money and kow-towed to without an ounce of respect (and, yes, many a foolish woman for her pretty face and good figure) but love transcends that tripe. You cannot possibly believe that state provision creates love and respect in marriage because if you do you shouldn't be invoking St Joseph for whom such a notion would be inexplicably alien!
ReplyDeleteIf that's your theory, Margi, then how do you account for the trends that we observe? Does the divorce rate increase all of a sudden because a bunch of people forget how to love, for no reason?
ReplyDeleteIt's just a fact that over the past few decades, working class men have suffered serious losses of earning power, political voice, and control in their daily lives. Entire communities are collapsing into chaos and abandonment because of this -- at least, that's what's happening on my side of the Atlantic. I don't know what the solution is, but it'll have to be more substantial than "love is all you need".
Exactly.
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